From the economy to Europe, crime to welfare, education to health
Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems all jostle for space on that tiny scrap of territory they call the middle ground.

Faced with the wide spectrum of vivid political opinions, our major political parties say we can have any colour we like – so long as it's an indistinguishable shade of grey.

Take for example the meltdown in the financial system. All three parties agree the poor banks have been picked on by those nasty city slickers and vast amounts of taxpayers' money must be offered to help them out.

I'm sorry but I just don't buy it. City traders are ruthless gamblers who have taken advantage of the current chaos to make a killing – but they didn't cause the problems in the first place.

The real responsibility lies much closer to home – right here in the North – where thanks to the incompetence and irresponsibility of former building society bosses, the region's once proud financial institutions have been brought to their knees.

After all it wasn't the hedge fund managers or short sellers who encouraged punters to gamble on house prices with dodgy buy-to-let mortgages, or who handed out 125 per cent mortgages like sweeties, or who dreamt up "self-certified" mortgages, which simply encouraged borrowers to lie about their true earnings.

No, these shocking mistakes were made in the boardrooms of the Halifax, Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock. That sound you can hear is the building society founders spinning in their graves.

Yet our politicians are prepared to spend vast amounts of our money rescuing failed banks without the merest hint of criticism of the people responsible.

Contrast that with the United States, where the fury of ordinary people has at least found an outlet on the political stage.

One Congressman said when "mom and pop" stores make bad business decisions, they go out of business, but the big banks expect ordinary people to pay for their mistakes.

Wouldn't it be marvellous if we had politicians on this side of the pond prepared to champion the little guy in this way? I'm not holding my breath.

Here the message to the banks is it doesn't matter how stupid, feckless or incompetent you are, those nice Messrs Brown, Cameron and Clegg will always be on hand with a blank cheque from the taxpayer should anything go wrong.

It is hardly likely to encourage responsible behaviour in the future, is it?

Cereal killjoys

Now we know who to blame for the outbreak of obesity among schoolchildren – step forward Tony the Tiger, Coco the Coco Pops Monkey, Moo the Dairylea Cow and Snap, Crackle and Pop.

In a report compiled by the once-sensible Which? – haven't they got anything better to do? – these so-called cartoon baddies have been blamed for promoting foods that are high in fat and sugar.

And as we've come to expect from the health zealots, Which? wants further heavy-handed regulation, when a smidgeon of common sense would be sufficient. The people best placed to deal with this are not the cereal companies, nor even poor old Tony the Tiger, but the mums and dads – yoo, hoo, remember us?

Perhaps if we took parental responsibility more seriously and stopped blaming everyone else, we could start to tackle the problem.

Besides which I'm not sure how far cartoon characters influence what children eat. I've been reading Desperate Dan since I was a boy, yet I've never managed to eat a cow pie with horns sticking out of the top, despite a lifetime's searching.